What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
Easy Rider
TCM was cutting loose last night, Lolita followed by Easy Rider. Youve got a totally hippie'd-out, drugged out, haired-out Peter Fonda and a young Dennis Hopper (whom I didnt even recognize til like halfway thru the film!), riding cross-country on motorcycles, eventually picking up Jack Nicholson. This is like some kind of dream I'd have after eating Thai food or something. The cemetary acid freak out scene was…. trippy ='.'=

So finally, I see both these classics.

Truly a great movie…

A little trivia:

- The weed they are smoking in the movie is real (as per interviews with both Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda).
- The brunette in the cemetery trip scene (and with them at mardi gras) is Toni Basil - that's right… the one-hit-wonder "Hey Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, Hey Mickey".
- Dennis Hopper directed the movie, while he and Peter Fonda (and one other guy) wrote it.

That movie always moves many emotions in me due to the fact that I had a somewhat similar young adulthood… along with the search for the "America" that they are looking for in the movie.

What was kinda a shocker about Easy Rider:

Yeah, made it difficult to do a sequel; bit like Titanic!!

kind of a movie
Escape from Its a Wonderful Life. Apparently it was originally aired on comedy central. its in six parts and done by the ucb cast…its hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9rXd…eature=related

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
What was kinda a shocker about Easy Rider:

Spoiler

The damn hippies even got blown away in the end! that really suprised me

Ah the memories. Best part was the music, for me—especially The Band. Glad you got to see that one, Sammy. As narpet says, truly a film by hippies, for hippies, paranoia about the Man and everything else included. I checked my rear view mirror for hostile rednecks for days after that flick, and I was in Chicago .

We watched Das Boot this weekend, supposedly to promote my German language project, but it turned out to be an English dubbed soundtrack with English subtitles. (wtf?) Still an excellent flick though not my normal fare—another one of those Easy Rider/Titanic endings, as well. The feel of losing a war, the acting, and minimalist script, all very effective.

Meet the Spartans : Stupid boring movie. Waste of anyones' time.

SuperBad : Now that's funny!

Anyone seen Latitude Zero?

Looks pretty awful, yet totally awesome at the same time

trailer

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3

I don't now how hard the director tried to scare the audience with this one, or maybe i'm jaded horror flicks fan. At least i got to see Viggo Mortensen as part of the evil family, although he was far more interesting in Eastern Promises.

Originally Posted by magerette
We watched Das Boot this weekend, supposedly to promote my German language project, but it turned out to be an English dubbed soundtrack with English subtitles. (wtf?) Still an excellent flick though not my normal fare—another one of those Easy Rider/Titanic endings, as well. The feel of losing a war, the acting, and minimalist script, all very effective.

Which version did you watch? Cinema cut (2.5 hours), DC (3 hours) or TV version (5.5 hours) ?
Did you check if the DVD has a 2nd audio track and alternative subtitles?

Originally Posted by Remus
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3

I don't now how hard the director tried to scare the audience with this one, or maybe i'm jaded horror flicks fan. At least i got to see Viggo Mortensen as part of the evil family, although he was far more interesting in Eastern Promises.

Ken Foree from Dawn of the Dead as the survivalist too ='.'=

I liked it, thought it was a cool addition to the TCM saga. The next film however, arghh…..

OMG

check out this killer Zardoz shirt!

Originally Posted by Gorath
Which version did you watch? Cinema cut (2.5 hours), DC (3 hours) or TV version (5.5 hours) ?
Did you check if the DVD has a 2nd audio track and alternative subtitles?

It was I think the Director's Cut—we had to flip the DVD, but I don't think it was five and a half hours. The version we got from Netflix had subtitles available in English, French and Spanish, but I couldn't make it play the soundtrack in anything but English. Anyway, even if I didn't get any German language bonuses, it was a great movie and well worth watching. The funny part was that the soundtrack and the subtitles often were completely different, especially in regard to profanity—the subtitles would be cussing a blue streak, while the soundtrack was very proper, so maybe it helped to have both.

The Lives of Others is coming next, and it states that it is definitely in German so I'm looking forward to that. I've also found a program by the Goethe Institute on public tv here—unfortunately it's pretty advanced, but it's a good sign they may eventually show others at a more basic level.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
The final showdown between Humbert and Quilty is nothing in the original, a terrible disappointment, it's literally some text that flashes onscreen explaning that Humbert kills Quilty and dies in prison. In that respect also, the remake handles this better, there's a great scene that actually portrays the murder of Quilty by the vengeful Humbert.

I'll admit it's been years since I saw it, but I'm positive I can recall Quilty's death scene — it was absolutely hilarious, with Peter Sellers alternately reeling from the bullets, pontificating, and swigging a last mouthful of booze, before finally expiring. Didn't the film start with that? (I never saw the Jeremy Irons remake, so it can't be that.)

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
Anyone seen Latitude Zero?

Looks pretty awful, yet totally awesome at the same time

trailer

Good catch Sammy! I've not seen this one, and it looks like it will be horribly wonderful

I missed like the first ten minutes or so of Lolita, and thought maybe I didnt miss much. Dangit!

Last Tango in Paris

Actually saw this on the big screen w/ friend of mine at the Museum of Contemporary Arts last night. Fitting movie for a couple people totally down on love and relationships on the accursed Valentines day, a rainy and unusually cold night made the mood going into this one perfect too.

The movie is pretty vile and abusive, the ugly side of human sexual nature. I liked it!

I'd have to say that's the ultimate anti-valentine movie, Sammy. I saw it when it first came out and found it both obvious and baffling, repelling and interesting. I'm not a big Brando fan, but he gave a virtuoso performance in that one. I never want to see it again, however.

You seem to be wracking up the neurotic love films, with this and Lolita.

Strange film. One of those that kinda hurts, yet kinda feels good.

…yeah, I'm on the strange love kick lately ='.'=
Also saw True Romance for the first time a few nights ago, that was pretty wild. It's a pretty major member of the modern cult film pantheon, I have a few friends that simply adore the film. While I thought it was pretty cool at times (there was some great dialogue), I dont think I'd go out of my way to buy it.

Last 'love' film I saw was The Holiday. Excellent and very funny film for anyone who missed it!!

Diary of the Dead

Unlike his last zombie opus, "Land of the Dead", which sent every zombie fan into overdrive, George Romero's latest zombie fiasco quietly shuffled out to greet us. It was very hard to find a theater that was showing it actually, in fact we practically had to cross the us/mexico border (the theater was like within a few miles of it).

There's a reason why, i think - this movie was bad.

Poor acting, stupid characters, lazy scripting, annoyances abound. The only positive thing about this film is that we laughed our asses off the entire time at the intentional and unintentional humor.

The main thrust of the film is this: take a bunch of twentysomethings in the middle of making a film, when *suprise* - a freak zombie apocalypse goes down. Amid the usual fight or flight shenaningans that follow, Romero has the director of the film shooting the events as they transpire, doing the old film-within-a-film thing here. The camera cant be rolling 24/7, so there's breaks between different scenes of the film. The problem is that Romero tends to make these breaks during some very inconvenient times. For example, at one point the main characters are pretty much lost, out on the road in the middle of nowhere. One of their friends gets badly wounded, next scene theyre suddenly, magically I guess teleported to a hospital. Characters are suddenly introduced, camera goes off, then characters are seen driving away when it comes back on. It just comes off as totally lazy.

Did I mention characters? Well they are nothing in this film.

Land of the Dead at least had some memorable central characters. They may have been kinda stupid, but they were something. Dennis Hopper and Asia Argento can more than fill their shoes, and can at least ham it up and be fun in a zombie film. The people in this film cant even act. There's a couple random characters that look promising at first, but anyone who's interesting in the least bit (like the dynamite-tossing Amish guy!) is but a blip in the whole of the film. Horrific events transpire around these wooden main characters, and in my opinion they dont act like anyone remotely would. I'm sorry, if someone was sticking their camera in your face while you were fending off the freakin undead, youd smash it upside their head next chance you got. It's stuff like this that's just retarded, I would have at the very least expelled such a dufus from my ragtag group of survivors.

Again, Romero has let the "social message" thing go to his head. It used to be first and foremost a zombie film, with a social message subtext tacked on so some horror eggheads can feel smart yammering on about later. You know, make some fucking ridiculous zombie film seem like some deep socio-political commentary. Ok, people in the mall are zombie consumers. Got it.

Now, youre absolutely bludgeoned to death with it, and it's totally out of place and pretentious as hell.

I'm yammering on myself now, but I'm just really disappointed. After being all psyched to see this, we found our jaws hitting the floor over and over again at what could only be described as total ineptitude. It's like some great composer releasing a cd of 80's hair metal tunes played on a kazoo or something.